1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to an image forming apparatus in which a sheet conveyance path along which a sheet passes is formed above a sheet accommodation portion mounted on an apparatus body.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, examples of an image forming apparatus include a copy machine, a laser beam printer, an LED printer, a facsimile apparatus, and a word processor of an electrophotographic image forming system. In such an image forming apparatus according to the related art, generally, frequently used regular sheets are stacked and fed in a sheet feeding cassette in which a predetermined number of sheets can be stacked, and less frequently used regular sheets such as thick sheets or special sheets such as long sheets other than regular sheets are manually fed. Note that the phrase “sheet manually fed” means that a sheet loaded on an image forming apparatus is fed manually by a user.
When a special sheet is fed, a user manually inserts a sheet directly to a conveyance path to feed the sheet to an image forming portion. Here, in such an image forming apparatus, a feeding guide portion which guides the sheet inserted into the conveyance path to the image forming portion is installed above a sheet feeding cassette.
Some image forming apparatuses according to the related art include a re-feeding conveyance portion that feeds a sheet again to an image forming portion to form an image on the rear surface of the sheet after an image is formed on one surface of the sheet. In the re-feeding conveyance portion of the image forming apparatus, a feeding guide portion that guides a sheet in which an image is formed on one surface to the image forming portion is also installed above a sheet feeding cassette.
In the image forming apparatus according to the related art in which the feeding guide portion is installed above the sheet feeding cassette, for example, when jamming occurs in the feeding guide portion, the sheet feeding cassette is extracted from the apparatus body and then the jammed sheet is taken out. However, when the jammed sheet may not be taken out merely by extracting the sheet feeding cassette, jam recovery is performed by rotating the feeding guide portion to open the conveyance path.
As a configuration in which the feeding guide portion is rotated to a position at which jam recovery can be performed, a configuration is suggested in which one end of the feeding guide portion is pivotally supported on an image forming apparatus body and the other end of the feeding guide portion is vertically rotatable (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-69732). When the jammed sheet is taken out, access is possible between the image forming apparatus body and the conveyance path by rotating the feeding guide portion downward, and thus usability of the jam recovery occurring in a sheet feeding portion can be improved.
In the image forming apparatus according to the related art, however, when the feeding guide portion is rotated downward, a work space is narrowed due to the fact that the rotation amount is small near the pivot portion of the feeding guide portion, and thus it is difficult to perform the jammed sheet recovery. In particular, with recent miniaturization of an apparatus, a space of a mounted portion of a sheet feeding cassette in a height direction is narrowed and, accordingly, it is difficult to stretch a hand into the space. Therefore, it is more difficult to perform the jammed sheet recovery.
The present invention is devised in view of such a circumstance and it is desirable to provide an image forming apparatus capable of easily performing jammed sheet recovery in a sheet feeding portion.